Polygamy tours offered by US church group in Utah and Arizona

A US church group is offering tourists the chance to take a guided tour around polygamist communities on the Utah/Arizona border, prompting fury from those living within them.

'The Polygamy experience: A guided tour of Colorado City' promises to offer curious travellers an insight into 'the US's largest and most secluded polygamist colony'.

The four-hour tour takes in Colorado City in Arizona and nearby Hildale over the border in Utah. Tour operator Richard Holm is hoping the guided excursions will dispel myths about the lives of those living in a community where plural marriage is common.

A screengrab from The Polygamy Experience website which claims to offer visitors the chance to 'learn the story of America's largest and most secluded polygamist colony'.

Guests will be transported around places of interest including cemeteries, markets and parks in a 29-seater bus, with topics such as the origins of fundamentalist Mormonism discussed.

Holm claims the tours will enable travellers to ask burning questions, with the front page of the company's website, www.polygamytours.com, reading: 'Why the prairie dresses and long braids? No makeup? More than one wife? All
questions to be answered during 'The Polygamy Experience'.

However, Holm, who organises the trips with his brother Heber, has faced an angry backlash from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints (FLDS), which controls both Colorado City and Hildale, for putting residents in the glare of the tourism spotlight.

"They want to come into the community like it's a spectacle, when for us,
it's like the circus is coming to town,' Spokesman Willie Jessop told the
US’s Salt Lake Tribune

"We hope people have more of a life than
to be suckered into that sort of scam."

FLDS members are notoriously private and have been the subject of much negative press since former leader Warren Jeffs was convicted of sexual assault charges two years ago. The religion began in the early 20th century after breaking away from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the belief in 'celestial plural marriage' has become the focus of much media attention.

Both Holm brothers have previous associations with the FLDS with Richard being exiled from the church in 2003. Heber Holm left more than 35 years ago.

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In defence of his business venture Holm said: "I have had dozens say that it is a good idea and they would love to go into
the community and see what is going on and haven't dared go off the highway with
all the reports and rumours and things of that nature.”